Visual Studio Market becomes victim of supply chain attack

Share post:

Aqua Security researchers discovered that hackers are conducting supply chain attacks using Visual Studio Marketplace. According to the report, attackers could impersonate popular VS Code extensions to hoodwink developers into downloading malicious versions.

The attack vector aimed at the Visual Studio Code extensions marketplace could be used to upload rogue extensions masquerading as their legitimate counterparts in order to launch supply chain attacks.

Aqua also discovered that a threat actor can not only imitate a popular extension by changing the URL slightly, but the marketplace also enables the malicious actor to utilize the same title and extension publisher details, such as the project repository information.

Aqua claims that a proof-of-concept (PoC) extension posing as the Prettier code formatting utility received over 1,000 installations in 48 hours from developers all over the world. It has since been removed.

According to Ilay Goldman, a security researcher at Aqua, the method “may operate as an entrance point for an assault on multiple organizations. Goldman added that “All extensions execute with the privileges of the user that has opened the VSCode without any sandbox.”

The sources for this piece include an article in DevClass.

Featured Tech Jobs

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Related articles

Cyber Security Today, March 27, 2024 – A botnet exploits old routers, a new malware loader discovered, and more warnings about downloading code from...

This episode reports on a new network of 40,000 infected small and home office routers and other devices that are part of a criminal botnet

Cyber Security Today, March 25, 2024 – A suspected China threat actor going after unpatched F5 and ScreenConnet installations

This episode reports on a new campaign stealing email passwords ,the latest data breaches

A hacker’s view of the civic infrastructure: Hashtag Trending, the Weekend Edition for March 23rd, 2024

What does the civic infrastructure look like through the eyes of a hacker? The legendary general Sun Tzu in the Art of War said that in order to defeat your enemy, you must first understand your enemy. How do you do this? He said, “to know your enemy, you must become your enemy.” If we

Cyber Security Today, Week in Review for week ending Friday, March 22, 2024

This episode features discussion on lessons learned from the ransomware attack on the British Library, advice for managing expectations of IT/security teams, why firms are leaving Google Firebase unprotecte

Become a member

New, Relevant Tech Stories. Our article selection is done by industry professionals. Our writers summarize them to give you the key takeaways